I turned 25 in May and have wanted to write this post ever since. It took me a bit longer than planned to come up with 25 but here we go. Here are 25 of my favorite life lessons and discoveries from the first 25 years of my life.

1. Being bossy doesn't make you a good leader. I was born a natural leader and an oldest child. This mostly means I spent most of my life bossing around my younger siblings.

2. Naps are awesome. I was the kid who literally never took a nap. I remember deciding I wasn't ever gonna nap in head start when they'd make us sleep with our heads on the desk. First off - that is not comfortable. Second - I have never been comfortable being out of control and my head down in a room full of people freaked even four year old me out. Oh but what I would give to have all those squandered naps back now.

3. Wrongs committed against you are never your fault. When someone else does a terrible thing to you or you are just collateral damage, that is not your fault. When you are made a victim, that isn't your fault.

4. Just because you have been victimized at some point or another in your life, doesn't mean you have to remain a victim forever. You actually shouldn't. Realize you were a victim. Past tense. Forgive. Heal. Move on.

5. Being mean to people won't make you happy. As a former bully, I learned this through first hand experience. I would belittle and attempt to crush the spirits of others because I was so miserable. it made me feel strong, but it didn't make my depression any better or make my life something worth living. it gave me no purpose and that's what I think I was lacking.

6. It is okay to be a night owl. Im not make me lazy just because my days start later and end later. I am my most creative at night and that's not a bad thing.

7. Smiling really does improve your mood. Try it.

8. Goofing off and acting out in school only ever hurt me.

9. Parents are human. Humans are not perfect. Man I wish I could tell 15 year old me this.

10. God is more than a feeling. I was a church camp kid so I am familiar with the emotions that can get stirred up in an exciting church service. I was always hollowed out when I got home and I couldn't feel God...or rather those emotions. When I learned God was more than a feeling I learned to pursue Him regardless of how I feel.

11. Milk in large quantities is not good for the tummy. Curse my love of chocolate milk and slight lactose intolerance. I wish I could tell seven year old Andriana and her parents that she is not a hypochondriac making up tummy aches after breakfast cereal every morning to get out of school... hindsight right?

12. Sleep is worth fighting for!! The body performs better when it's charged. Eight hours of sleep is a priority!!

13. Dogs are great. I spent more than half of my life with a deep fear of dogs. there was this situation with a dog chase in my little red wagon... anyways it was traumatizing. I got my first puppy at 24 and I LOOOOVE her and my tolerance of all dogs has sky rocketed.

14. There is immense power in our words. What we say about ourselves, others or our circumstances shapes what we think. It is important to learn to tame the tongue and always speak life!

15. Others people’s actions and attitude’s don’t justify or define my own. I am in charge of me. I choose how I behave. I choose what I will allow to influence my life.

16. The world does not revolve around me... I know. I was shocked too.

17. To make a friend you have to be a good friend. Being a good friend requires thinking of other more than yourself.

18. Serving others is a great way to kick depression. This is because depression makes us very selfish and self focused. It causes us to isolate ourselves and then we only have our problems to think about. Stepping out and finding other people in need and meeting those needs helps shift the focus and lift our spirits.

19. Being your own boss is awesome!

20. Joy ALWAYS comes in the morning. The Bible says “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5 KJV) I have found this to be true. Heartache, loss & pain always give way to joy when we cling to God through it and wait for morning.

21. Rejection is very hard to get over. The pain from it runs very deep and effects everything you do and all the relationships you makes…or don’t make. The only way I have found to cope with and get over rejection is through the One whom was also rejected by all those He cared for and has promised NEVER to reject us. His steadfast, unconditional & everlasting love can and will heal all of those places.

22. Forgiveness is a journey. It is also a choice. It does not mean to forget. It is a choice to take back the power that unforgiveness has over you. It is a daily task to choose not to remember the wrong against the person you’ve forgiven and not to bring it up against them. Forgiveness is not a feeling.

23. Your lineage does not have to define you. You create your legacy. Not your parents or your grandparents or anyone else.

24. Who you were doesn't dictate who you are or will be. The past does not define your future.

I LOVE praise and worship. I am a big believer that your experience with it corporately at church on Sundays is a reflection of your private praise and worship time.

Lately, I have been trying to focus on better hosting the presence of God in my home. It is important to me that Judah grow up experiencing the Father through the day to day details and actions of his father and me.

So we have been spending the first hour or so of the morning together listening to worship music and saying a little prayer together. I pray, and he contributes a few “da da da's” and “buhbye’s.”

I pick 4 to 5 songs that feel relevant to my current circumstances and create a playlist that we listen to for a few weeks. I love picking songs with truths I struggle to believe or wrap my head around and playing them until I feel like my soul believes the words I am declaring through them.

These playlists will be a new ongoing series. Members of our community get pdf guides to accompany the playlist. If that interests you then know you are of course invited to join our community of thousands of praying women below!

We all have this deep need to be known and understood. We long to be heard and accepted. In spite of these needs that we all share, we tend to be terrible at meeting this need in others without doing some serious work to grow in self-awareness.

So how can we love others when we feel entirely unheard by them? How can we continue to listen when it seems our words are falling on deaf ears? How can we pursue connection when it seems all the other person is interested in is distance?

I know that it is possible and I know that you can become really really great at it and I know that if you do the work necessary all of your marriage and relationships have a great chance of improving and strengthening.

A sad reality is that tons of believers don’t actually know how the Father feels about them. We tend to make up these narratives, and we imagine that God responds to us the way that we would respond to us.

I lived quite a bit of my Christian life believing that God was this distant, Gandolf the Grey looking deity in the sky which looked down on me with apathy. I thought He just wasn’t that interested or involved in the details of my life but that He was very much keeping score.

I imagined when I sinned or fell short that He was angry and I would even have this imagery in my head of Him turning away from me, punishing me with the silent treatment — washing His hands of me until I did enough to earn His love and favor back.

I believed this because this is how I learned people responded to my shortcomings and mistakes. Imagine the freedom when I learned that none of that was true!

The truth is that He is crazy about you. Let’s look at some key points and verses that reveal just how much the Father loves you.

Hearing from God always seemed like this mystical and unreachable highly spiritual thing. When people would say they “heard from God,” I would either scoff in cynicism thinking they were just trying to look holy or I would flinch in jealousy that I had no idea what they meant or how to hear from Him myself.

Maybe you feel the same way. Perhaps you’ve heard Him a time or two but nowhere near as much as other seem to or you would like to. Maybe you’ve never heard His voice. You would love to be able to hear from the Father and think of Him as a close friend, but you are just not sure how to get there.

Trust me. I get it.

Let’s pull back the veil and remove the misconceptions. Let really talk about how you go about hearing from God in your life. Here is what I’ve learned on the journey so far that will help you learn to hear His voice more clearly.

The Psalms are packed full of the pure and honest heart cries of people who found themselves in all sorts of circumstances. I love the honesty with which they felt free to approach God.

The vast majority of Psalms came pouring out of a heart wrought with pain and turmoil. Most of them are laments. They are the songs of the people of God crying out to Him in the midst of loss, persecutions, obstacles, trials, and heartaches.

The Psalms are a beautiful haven when life is tough because they remind us of the power found in praise and worship regardless of our distresses. They point us to the comfort found in His presence, even in the midst of pain, when we remember how wonderfully faithful and kind He is.

We’re all about helping you to navigate the challenging seasons of life and reminding you that you are loved more than you could ever imagine by the Father.

That’s why I created this graphic quiz. I used to love these in teenybopper magazines where you find out what hair color you should wear or what celebrity crush best suits you.

I hope we achieved a bit more depth with our than those did. We want to help you discover a message your heart needs at the moment from the father. Different seasons call for different messages and reminders, so we pray you get a little encouragement regardless of your current circumstances.

I write this post today over the course of approximately 6 nap times. In this season of my life, I am a new mom to my sweet little 4-month-old son. My days are consumed with nursing, nap times and trying to keep my business moving forward to help my family. Overwhelm frequently knocks on my door these days.

I don’t know what your season of life looks like but I can assume if you are here reading this, maybe overwhelm has been harassing you lately as well.

If in the midst of a stressful season you’ve ever found yourself asking questions like, “Where is God when I am overwhelmed,” “What does He think about my overwhelm,” or “What can I expect from God in seasons where I am overwhelmed?” then this is for you.

Here are some verses that point us towards God’s heart for us when we find ourselves overwhelmed and what we can expect from Him when we are in over our heads.

I get it. Some seasons of life can be so tough to endure. It can be hard even to know what to say to God. That’s why we’re going to look at 5 prayers for hard times based on 5 powerful passages of scripture.

I am pretty open on this blog about the challenges I have faced. I went through a season where my marriage almost fell apart. My husband and I had several friendships end really badly. We lost two babies to miscarriage.

As I am writing this post, we are two month into a move we made across the country. We are now over 1000 miles from home and family with our three-month-old baby where we know no one.

Life is full of seasons of hard times. Today I want to share some verses and how I would turn these verses into prayers for strength in difficult times. You were created for a life of abundance and joy in the Father, but unfortunately, in this life we have troubles. What are some bible verses for anxiety and fear that we can turn to find rest and freedom?

I am glad you asked.

Today we are breaking down some of my absolute favorite passages and verses about anxiety and fear. We are going to see what the bible says about fighting fear and worry. And of course, I am going to do my darnedest to remind you how crazy loved you are.

You were created for a life of abundance and joy in the Father, but unfortunately, in this life we have troubles. What are some bible verses for anxiety and fear that we can turn to find rest and freedom?

I am glad you asked.

Today we are breaking down some of my absolute favorite passages and verses about anxiety and fear. We are going to see what the bible says about fighting fear and worry. And of course, I am going to do my darnedest to remind you how crazy loved you are.

Mike, and I are no stranger to harder disappointments either. We have had quite a bit of loss in our marriage thus far. We lost a lot of really close friends. We also lost two babies to miscarriage.

So I understand the temptation just to throw up your hands and say, “I’ll just stop hoping.” Honestly, if Judah (our three month old) hadn’t been a total unplanned surprise, I don’t know that I would have allowed my hopes to get up with conceiving again.

Now disappointment is inevitable in this life. So what do we do? When finding a spouse takes longer than planned. When your husband stops initiating date nights. When the promotion is taking longer than seems fair. When whatever it is you have believed for still looks like an unheard and unanswered prayer.

So what do we do when we are disappointed? Whether big or small, what does the Bible say about disappointment? Let’s look at one of my favorite passages of scripture about disappointment.

A Love Worth Living For

Hello! My name is Andriana! Welcome to A Love Worth Living For where our number one purpose is to remind you that you are wildly loved by the King of the universe. We believe that this love is what makes life livable. We believe that your abundant life is found in the truth of how incredibly loved you are.